Rodong Sinmun Tuesday urges this in a bylined article.

The Japanese imperialist aggressors' plunder of Korean cultural relics was something unprecedented in history.

They dug up at least 200 royal mausoleums and 11,000 ancient tombs to loot treasures during their occupation of Korea. Their amount is uncountable.

Hirobumi Ito took away more than 10 truck loads of treasures from King Kongmin Mausoleum.

In his wake Terauchi, first "resident-general" of Korea, additionally promulgated "regulations on preserving ancient sites and historic relics." He exercised the power of the "Residency-General" to cordon off the spot and robbed Korea of historic relics of the Korean nation amid a terror-ridden atmosphere.

The Japanese imperialists' brutal vandalism and plunder of Korean cultural properties, the spiritual and material heritages handed by ancestors, are thrice-cursed crimes as they were aimed to stamp out the cultural tradition and soul of the Korean nation and obliterate it.

It is more than half a century since the defeat of the Japanese imperialists. But nobody can guess how many items of cultural properties out of those looted by them from Korea still remain unknown.

The cultural properties are the precious treasures of the country and the nation which cannot be bartered for anything.